There are a lot of people struggling with stress, anxiety, and even severe anxiety disorders today. It’s an epidemic. Our lives are simply moving too fast. The world we are negotiating has experienced more significant change in the last 100 years than in the one thousand years prior. Our bodies simply aren't designed to keep up with the pace and acclimate that quickly. And that’s just talking about our lifestyle, jobs, habits, and changing social roles and mores. What about the barrage of chemicals our bodies are dealing with and endlessly interfacing with our social media devices and a 24/7 news cycle? All of this is stressing our bodies and nervous systems, as well.

As an Orange County Marriage and Family Therapist and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner specialized in holistic approaches to anxiety reduction and trauma healing, I come in contact with Anxious Folk every day. Tons of them. And they’re not just anxious. They’re super anxious. Anxiety is part of our survival system so when we literally need to Run For Your Life! we can, fueled by the powerful adrenaline and stress hormones surging through our body. While anxiety will always be part of our innate survival mechanisms, it wasn’t meant to run our lives. When anxiety is running your life, flooding you with stress hormones, running you into the ground, and keeping you in hyped up states of vigilance, high activation, and constant worry or rumination, something is amiss. Big time. Anxiety has gotten the better of you and you’re stuck in Anxious Overdrive. Very uncomfortable. Very painful emotionally and sometimes physically, and potentially life-disrupting.

What Happens When Your Body Gets Stuck In Anxious Overdrive?

By the time most my clients find me they’ve already figured out anxiety is their big issue. Anxious Folk. We tend to know who we are (and if we don't, our friends and family definitely do). In fact, many Anxious Folk are adept at diagnosing (and misdiagnosing) themselves on the Internet. But how can you tell you might be dealing with anxiety? What are the symptoms?

The Symptoms Of Severe Anxiety.

1. Racing thoughts. Lots of them. Anxious Folk tend to be bright, intelligent people with great big beautiful frontal lobes. Our big beautiful brains are adept at problem solving. We like to chew on things. We’re also good at creating new problems to solve. We call that “just being realistic.” Or “just being smart or prepared.” Everyone else calls it “worry.” When your mind won’t turn off and is busily creating and trying to solve problems that may never come up at all, there’s a good chance you’re struggling with anxious thought patterns. Anxious thought is characterized by cycles of intrusive, worrisome, negative, repetitive thoughts and particularly, catastrophic or “worse case scenario” thinking. Once Anxious Folk get started worrying about something, we’re going to chew on it for quite awhile. Sometimes the only thing that will disrupt our train of thought will be a new train of anxious thought. Anxiety and anxious thought can take over your experience of yourself and disrupt life. It can be exhausting.

2. Sleep disruption. There are a lot of things that can disrupt sleep. Anxiety is one of the more prevalent causes of sleep difficulties and insomnia. Anxious thought patterns will keep us awake at night. Anxious thoughts may follow us into our dreams and disturb our rest. We may wake up in the middle of the night with a start, already anxious, already worried, or even in a full-blown panic attack. Or we may wake up way too early, even when deeply fatigued, and be unable to resettle back into sleep.

3. Panic Attack. Not everyone who experiences anxiety or even severe anxiety is going to experience panic attacks, but many people do. A panic attack is a discrete event of extreme and overwhelming panic and fear, often for no perceivable reason. The symptoms of panic attack include but are not limited to: terror or fear that one is dying at this moment, fear of losing control or “going crazy,” heart palpitations, profuse sweating, shortness of breath, Derealization (or feeling unreal, disconnected to reality, or in a dreamlike state), chest pains, dizziness, a choking sensation, tingling, numbness, muscle weakness, and dry mouth.

A panic attack will typically peak in intensity in 10-15 minutes and will rarely last over 30 minutes, although they can last up to an hour. Once you’ve had a full-blown panic attack it’s not uncommon your anxiety now becomes organized around avoiding ever having another attack. Having had that feeling once, you never want it again. Your fear and anxiety then mobilize around avoiding whatever triggered the last attack, anxiety over having another attack, and high vigilance regarding any level of anxiety. Your fear of recurring panic can become a very controlling and life-limiting experience. People may have intense anxiety attacks and never quite tip into full-blown panic and yet still have a very uncomfortable and debilitating experience.

4. An inability to be calm or still. Anxious Folk are busy people. More than that, they often have real difficulty sitting still or doing nothing and relaxing for a little while. Sometimes they can feel like they are just trying to outrun their anxious mind. Anxious Folk are the original Energizer Bunnies. They can get a lot done in a short period of time, but will have a hard time slowing down, taking a deep breath, and letting it all go for a little while. Sometimes Anxious Folk will present with rapid breathless speech. It just comes with the territory.

5. Difficulty concentrating. When there’s a lot going on in your mind already, it can be difficult to concentrate on the task at hand. Your anxious mind can be very engaging and distracting. It’s as if most your bandwidth is already taken up hosting your anxious thoughts. Sometimes there’s just not a lot of space left over for anything else. You can appear highly distractible at times. It also means people around you can sometimes feel you’re a bit disconnected or aloof. Anxious thoughts running through your mind can make it hard for you to pull out of your head and overthinking to truly connect with people. Even when you want to.

6. Irritability. Irritability and a short fuse may present with some Anxious Folk and particularly with men and teens. In a sense, anxiety is draining your energy to the degree that anyone or anything can seem like an irritating distraction. Irritation can also be a defensive response, gruffly covering up your state of anxiety. Sometimes we’d rather be perceived as a grouch than a fearful worried person. Anxiety is housed in both the body and the mind, no matter who is experiencing it, and has a deeply somatic (or body-oriented aspect). One way this is expressed is in irritability.

7. Social situations may be difficult. Sometime severe anxiety is going to show up as difficulty managing social situations. Anxious Folk may find themselves tongue-tied and hesitant to speak up. It can be difficult to get past the fear of rejection or the fear you’ll say something stupid, or that once you start talking you won’t be able to stop. Your mind may not shut up enough for you to actually relate directly with people. Instead, your anxious thoughts are making a lot of noise ("She thinks I'm stupid!" "Why did I say that?" "I think I offended him." "Can they tell how much my palms are sweating right how?" "How can I leave and get out of this situation?").

Anxious Folk make great listeners and may fear taking up too much space in a group and hang back, not offering their opinions or insights. As a result, it’s not uncommon for Anxious Folk to be mislabeled as “aloof” or “withdrawn.” Entering new social situations can be especially challenging and sometimes feels impossible.

8. A host of uncomfortable physical sensations. Anxiety isn’t just experienced on the thought or even the emotional level, but is experienced intensely on the physical level as well. These symptoms can include racing heart, pain or tightness in the chest, a sense of heaviness in the chest, shoulders, or limbs, sweating, shortness of breath, stomach upset, nausea or butterflies, lower GI distress like cramping and diarrhea, trembling, twitching and exaggerated startle responses, headaches, frequent urination or the urge to urinate, sleeplessness, fatigue, inability to eat or loss of appetite, muscle tension, muscle and joint pain.

9. Significant specific fears or phobias. Rather than experiencing a more general “anxious all the time” feeling, anxiety may manifest as specific irrational fears (i.e. fear of small spaces, spiders, dogs, flying, heights, snakes, vomiting, social situations, health issues, driving, etc.). Depending on the nature of your phobia and how likely you are to come in contact with your triggers, you can experience a great deal of inconvenience, limitation, and fear.

Symptoms Of Severe Anxiety Can Be Debilitating.

Symptoms of severe anxiety can be debilitating or at a minimum, painful and distressing, but I probably don't need to tell you that. Chances are, if you found me, you or someone you love is struggling with severe anxiety now. There’s no reason to suffer alone and on your own. There is help available.

There are things you can do on your own to feel a bit better. The reality is, however, when you're experiencing severe anxiety, chances are you've been experiencing it for awhile. If you knew how to rid yourself of the experience and symptoms in a healthy safe way, you would have done it by now. Severe or even just strong symptoms of anxiety warrant the support of an experienced professional to ease and coach you through the anxiety reduction process. And it is a process.

It Took Years To Become As Anxious As You Are Today.

It took years to become as anxious as you are today; it can take a little while to resolve it. You don’t have to do it by yourself. There’s qualified help out there to coach you as you work to reduce your anxiety and increase your level of happiness and well-being overall. Find a therapist who is comfortable with you, even when you are popping out of your skin. Look for a therapist who specializes in stress and anxiety. There are drug-free approaches to winning back your life and moving forward. I use them to support people I work with every day. You can choose peace. Now.

Are you suffering from high levels of stress, worry, and fear and wondering if you might actually have an anxiety disorder? Is your anxious experience disrupting your life and getting in your way? After all, lots of people are stressed these days, how do you know if you’re just momentarily stressed out or there’s enough going on that you have tipped into an anxiety issue? Here’s the thing, many many people are trying to live with much higher levels of anxious experience than our nervous systems and bodies were designed for. I know. I specialize in the reduction and healing of anxiety. I work with Anxious Folk every day. Let’s figure out if you could use a little more support with your anxious feelings than you’re getting now.Here’s what we’re looking for:

1. Repetitive, negative, intrusive thoughts. Worry that just won’t stop. It’s not the way you were designed to live, but you can get stuck in overdrive and have a hard time trying to turn off your head.2. Sleep disruption. Lots of things can contribute to sleep disruption, including a host of physical issues. Anxious Folk, however, are going to experience more difficulty than most in falling asleep, staying asleep, waking too early, and waking rested. Is anxiety the culprit? It could be, particularly if you notice you are worried and anxious when you wake up or if anxious rumination is keeping you up in the first place.3. Care-taking. Lots of folks want to be nice; Anxious Folk often define themselves as “Nice.” What this turns out to mean is you don’t know how to say “no,” even when it is clear it’s in your best interests to do so. You’re constantly over-extended, over-committed, giving at your own expense, volunteering, working unpaid overtime, and having a hard time setting appropriate boundaries in most of your relationships. Sometimes it may feel like you’re helping everyone else and no one is there for you. It’s not uncommon to find Anxious Folk consistently sacrificing their health, well-being, time, and treasure for friends, family, and strangers. If you feel terrible saying “no,” even when it is obvious it should really be okay to do so, there’s a good chance anxiety is a player in your life. 4. Phobias. There are a lot of ways anxiety may show up in your life. For some Anxious Folk it may be irrational fears. Lots of people are afraid of public speaking. I hear again and again that more people are afraid of public speaking than death. Wow. So, I’ll set public speaking aside. It’s too common to be of help here. If your anxious mind has pointed itself towards a fear of heights, spiders, snakes, small spaces, flying, dentists, throwing up (yes, it’s a thing), or a host of other things and situations and you find yourself thinking about your fear, avoiding chances of experiencing it, and organizing your life in such a way as to manage and avoid it, chances are, you’re struggling with a nice dose of anxiety. Specifically, phobias. It’s okay. It’s just what some anxious minds do in order to cope with anxious feelings in the first place.5. Perfectionism. Anxious Folk want to be perfect, believe they should be perfect, and may punish themselves brutally for any perceived flaw or supposed imperfection. Perfectionism creates misery. Period. And it is one way we will dress up our negative critical interior voice and call it good and helpful. Perfectionism will drive others away from us and disrupt our relationships. It may contribute to unfinished projects, PhD dissertations, and missed deadlines at work, because nothing is ever finished to your standards. Perfectionism is the slave driver face of your anxious experience.6. Compulsions. Every once in awhile anxiety will show up with compulsive behaviors and a need for patterns, ritualized actions, or rigid orderliness. We’re starting to dance in the Obsessive Compulsive side of the ballroom with this one. Full blown, this can be a miserable thing to deal with. At the same time, lots of Anxious Folk may identify a few mild obsessive traits within themselves, particularly when they are experiencing long-term stressors or significant fatigue. I, myself, can be a “checker” when I’m really tired or stressed. If I find I’m checking several times whether I unplugged the iron, turned the oven off, or locked the door before I left the house, I know I have to up the intensity of my self-care. 7. Social Discomfort. Some Anxious Folk find it extremely difficult to go out and mix with people in public. Every interaction is fraught with room for failure, missteps, and judgments. When this experience is overwhelming enough, people can start to give up on trying and isolate themselves. A lot of energy will be used to over think any interaction. Often, highly self-critical appraisals will be utilized. In fact, being super hard on yourself is a good anxiety indicator in general.8. Panic. Panic attacks and anxiety attacks are debilitating and overwhelming. Full-blown panic attacks literally feel like you’re dying. A panic attack may be accompanied by profuse sweating, shortness of breath, chest pains, and light-headedness. In fact, people land in the ER every day with heart attack symptoms that turn out to be panic. Some studies suggest as much as 83% of ER visits are related to anxiety or panic in one way or the other. Not everyone who experiences anxiety is going to experience panic, but everyone with panic attack episodes is experiencing anxiety, as well. There are more indicators of anxiety, to be sure, but this is a good list to start with. The thing is, do you really need one more label to apply to yourself? Probably not. It’s a lot less important to label yourself with an anxiety disorder than it is to find a way to lower your experience of stress and anxiety over all and enjoy your life now. Overwhelming experiences of anxiety and panic, no matter what your particular flavor is, are not indicators of your brokenness. Your anxious experience is not a flaw or a negative personality trait. It’s simply the way the body and the mind respond to specific kinds of stimulation and situations. You’ve learned anxious coping strategies and they can be unlearned, both on the physical and emotional levels. That's very good news and it happens in my office every day, one step at a time.

Author

I'm Victoria Wallace Schlicht. I'm a licensed California Marriage and Family Therapist and a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP), which is something like a Nervous Systems Whisperer but without the white cowboy hat. I specialize in Anxiety reduction and trauma resolution. I have a multi-faceted, normalizing, non-pathologizing approach to the human experience. I just don't get the need to label folks as sick or broken. Let's face it, nearly everyone you know is either experiencing highly anxious states or has had a brush with anxiety in the past. How do I know? Well, for one thing we are living in a world that is veering out of control along several fronts. If you're not stressed out, you're simply not paying attention or you've mastered this plane of experience. We're dealing with higher levels of change at more rapid pace than at any time in our known history. We weren't designed for this kind of stress. We weren't designed to feel as if we are constantly trying to out run the Sabre-Toothed Tiger at our heels. Our over-functioning is running us down. We need a different viewpoint. New tools. Better tools. And I have them. Or at least a big pile of them. And I love to talk about them. A lot. In fact, you can't shut me up. So, I've finally gone and built a bully pulpit of my own. We'll be unwinding the mystery of Anxious experience every week Right here. Enjoy! I'm the author of Thriving in a Chaotic World, a voluminous audio information product for reducing anxious experience and produce a monthly eZine. Opt-in here to receive Thriving News